Who We Are

CoSentry Products and Services Overview

As a Business Continuity and Managed Service Provider, the Company’s product and services include the following services:

·         Co-location Facilities

·         Professional Hosting

·         Network Systems Management

·         Technical Support Solutions

·         Hardware Recovery Services

·         Dedicated Server Management

·         Storage Management

·         Internet Access

·         Work Group Recovery Services

·         Print Recovery Services

·         Related Consulting Services.

With full service facilities in Omaha, NE, Kansas City, MO, and Sioux Falls, SD, the Company is the region’s most comprehensive business continuity provider, and one of the few nationally that offers Data Center & Systems Recovery, Workgroup Recovery, and Print-to-Mail Recovery Services, all under one banner.  A detail summary of each of the Company’s offers as outlined above is provided later in this section.

Secure Data Center Offerings

As the foundation for the Company’s business resiliency offerings, CoSentry’s state of the art Secure Data Centers provide an industrial-strength, secure environment for companies who need total reliability and extensive growth capacity. The facilities are built with secure Cisco^® infrastructure and are protected with intelligent power, generator backup, secure biometrics and card access, redundant cooling and raised floors. The facilities have been designed from the ground up to support high power consumption devices. The network has multiple fiber runs from multiple carriers delivered via state of the art technologies to allow for maximum capacity and redundancy. The network is monitored by our Network Operations Center in Omaha, NE which manage all devices and network connections 24x7, using the latest tools including SolarWinds^®, Netcool^®, HP Openview^®, Compaq Insight Manager^®, Cisco Works^®, and SolutionsDesk.

The Company’s perceived value proposition for its Secure Data Center Offering can best be depicted in the following illustration:

With the Company’s focus on providing Enterprise Solutions to a variety of industries, CoSentry undergoes a variety of audits and assessments of all of its data centers on an annual basis, and allows its customers to leverage those assessments in order for them to more easily meet their compliance standards.  CoSentry has completed certification for the following:

·            Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) includes Visa CISP/MasterCard SDP

·            SAS/70 Type II Audit

In addition, the Company has participated with clients to ensure its facility and services meet HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley requirements.  The Company believes these audits and certifications demonstrate its commitment to our customers, and the Company’s ability to deliver the services in a controlled, secure, and documented manner. 

Data Center Space (Co-location and Professional Hosting)

CoSentry’s Data Center space offering is designed to provide flexible solutions to meet its client’s needs.  The Company’s myriad of options ensures affordability in terms of features and functionality and are summarized below.

Partial Cabinets      CoSentry’s cabinets are provided in both escorted and non-escorted locations within the facilities and are located in shared space.  The cabinets contain friction locks with PIN codes for increased security. 

Full Cabinet            CoSentry’s cabinets are provided in both in both escorted and non-escorted locations in the facilities and are located in shared space.  The cabinets contain friction locks with PIN codes for increased security.

Cage                        CoSentry cage space comes in various sizes, is provided in both escorted and non-escorted locations in the facilities, and is located in shared space.  The cabinets have security card assess for increased security.

Custom Suites         CoSentry custom suite builds are available upon request.  The suites are located in the same facilities as the shared space but have separate secured entrances into the suite with restricted badge access for increased security.   

With the Data Center Facilities in Omaha, KC, and Sioux Falls as the centerpiece of its operations, the Company provides a myriad of other business resiliency solutions such as: systems management; server and storage management; internet bandwidth; work group recovery; and print recovery offerings; providing flexible options to meet our client’s needs and ensuring affordability in terms of features and functionality.

Network Systems Management

The Company’s M3 program is offered for the organization that wants all of the advantages of an enterprise network management platform without all of the internal costs and resource skills required.  With a robust set of tools such as web based event management system (SolutionsDesk – more fully described later in this section), user customizable database, SLA performance monitoring, and automated e-mail alerts, the Company’s M³ program provides the power to effectively and efficiently manage systems of any sizes.  Proactive uptime monitoring also allows issues to be identified and responded to before they become costly outages.  A summary of the Company’s offering follows:

M1 (Monitor and Notify)      With this offering, CoSentry uses its tools described above to notify their customer when a monitored server or network device (or elements of a device) is unavailable or when a designated metric meets a negative pre-defined threshold (i.e. low disk space).  The customer is able to view cumulative statistics on monitored devices / elements in a dedicated secured portal.  Email notification is included in the base offering, but notices can also be sent into remote ticketing systems or via phone calls from the CoSentry 24x7 NOC to designated customer contracts. 

M2 (Monitor, Manage, & Notify)     The Company extends its M1 offering to include server and network device management.  Specifically, CoSentry will reactively manage device hardware and software through problem identification, troubleshooting, attempted resolution, customer escalation, and recommended further action.  The M2 program allows the customer to supplement their existing IT resources with CoSentry’s 24x7 monitoring capability, management, and engineering expertise.

M3 (Monitor, Manage, Maintain, & Notify)           The Company extends its M2 offering to include full server and network device management and lifecycle maintenance.  Specifically, CoSentry will proactively manage and maintain device hardware and software through patching, applying critical updates, detecting hardware problems, and monitoring system logs.  In addition, CoSentry manages vendor escalations on the customer’s behalf.  The CoSentry M3 program allows the Company to act as a complete IT resource for 24x7 monitoring, management, and maintenance of customers’ devices.

Technical Support Solutions

The Company augments its network systems management offering with a technical help desk call center offering.  With state of the art software, the Company provides a broad array of 24x7 advanced help desk solutions to its customers.  The Company’s Service Command Center utilizes SolutionsDesk, a highly reliable, flexible and customer customizable web-based trouble ticketing system designed specifically for the unique needs of the IT industry.  The Company currently offers and supports customers with 3 levels of help desk tasking: Level 1 call receipt, tracking and management; Level 2 hardware, software support and application support, remote diagnostics and resolution; and Level 3 patch management, reconfiguration, and for several customers, kernel support on their proprietary applications. 

A key example of the Company’s capability is demonstrated in its development efforts with HP Corporation (HP).  HP had requirements for a unique system to monitor and support private-labeled systems nationally and internationally.  In a co-development effort with HP, the Company wrote a software package that has been in production for three years and is supporting thousands of devices for some of HP’s most prestigious clients.

Hardware Recovery Services (Mainframe, Midrange, and Cold Server Offers)

The company launched a hardware recovery services offering in the second half of 2006.   In partnership with Omaha Information Services Corporation (OISC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Mutual of Omaha, the Company began offering mainframe recovery services with Mutual of Omaha and OPPD as initial customers.   The Company provides raised floor, network infrastructure, sales, marketing, and back office operations for the mainframe recovery services.    OISC provides the mainframe and ancillary hardware, and the technical staff to do presales engineering, resiliency testing, and disaster recovery technical support and engineering.  As with the Work Group Recovery offering, the mainframe offering has the features and benefits of a premium offering but at competitive market rates.

In addition to the mainframe recovery service, the Company has also launched a server hardware recovery offering. The key elements of the offering are designed to achieve the economies of scale with over-subscriptions while providing a premium service at current market rates.    The Company offers a premium six hour return to operations (RTO), not generally available in the market today, and a forty eight hour market standard RTO. 

 Dedicated or Shared Server Management

With this business resiliency offering, the Company provides dedicated (i.e. one to one server to customer relationship), or shared (i.e. one to many) server hardware, monitoring, and operating systems management.  Specifically, this service includes the monthly review of operating system patches and release upgrades and implementation on an as-needed basis and coordinated with the client, monitoring of event logs on Windows Server 2003, and monitoring of network interface status on the servers.  The server hardware is serviced by trained and certified engineers and monitored by CoSentry tools for errors and hardware failure.  Problems occurring on these servers arising from the operating system or hardware are the Company’s responsibility to identify, troubleshoot, and resolve and repair. 

The Server Management service is offered in both a dedicated and shared server environment (one to one or one to many servers to customer relationship). Additionally, based on the feature set required by the customer (impacting the Company’s investment in the server hardware), and the level of support requested by CoSentry personnel, the offering is available at three pricing and service tiers.

Storage Management

The Company provides a complete suite of managed storage solutions that easily and cost effectively allows its clients to access its business-critical information.  Through its partnering efforts, CoSentry has developed a broad array of powerful, proven storage solutions that give their customers unmatched reliability, availability, and capabilities that they need to manage growing data – and achieve high levels of consolidation. A summary of the Company’s offerings follows:

Shared SAN Storage Solutions        The Company’s Shared SAN Storage Solutions are intended for use by Customers that require enterprise-class disk storage in a leveraged environment (shared by multiple Customers).  Many customers seeking this solution lack the skills and capital requirements to implement these highly evolved and sophisticated SAN Storage Solutions.  By using its expertise and infrastructure, the Company can support multiple customers in a single environment meeting their enterprise-class requirements but keeping their costs lower.

Additionally, the Company can add value to the SAN Storage model by implementing similar infrastructures in multiple geographically-diverse Data Centers.  This will support the local customers for that Data Center as well as offer remote disk storage to which the Company can replicate customer data from other SAN Storage Solutions in remote Data Centers.

Managed SAN Storage Solutions    With the Managed SAN Storage Solution, the Company will use its expertise to manage a Company or Customer-owned SAN Storage Solution within one of the Company’s Data Centers in a secure and reliable environment.  Management of the SAN Storage Solution includes regular proactive maintenance, problem resolution, and vendor escalation if needed.  Vendor support contracts are the responsibility of the customer in the situation when the customer is the owner of the SAN Storage Solution.

SAN Storage Solutions are the environments used to provide disk space storage to servers on a Storage Area Network.  These environments allow high-speed, high-capacity, and high-availability disk space storage to be dynamically assigned to servers.  Typically, the SAN Storage Solution consists of switches and storage devices connected to servers.  These can be very complex environments requiring specialized expertise.  Customers can leverage the Company’s SAN knowledge to cost-effectively manage and maintain their SAN Storage Solution.  This solution is applicable in the case that the SAN Storage Solution is dedicated to a single customer. 

DataVault      DataVault is the Company’s proprietary technology process and methodology for providing advanced archival, storage and retrieval capabilities for those customers that require immediate, on-line access to critical data. This service is in high demand in those markets wherein record keeping is a regulatory matter and retrieval has intrinsic value. This includes legal, financial reporting, investor and insurance documentation. The service is a true agent-less back-up of encrypted data for both on-site and off-site storage. The service is fully automated and can back-up multiple machines concurrently. This generational storage concept is also highly cost-effective as it operates on a block level process. This means the customer only pays for incremental changes in their data profile.

Another significant use of this service is its ability to be operated as virtual tape back up—a very popular method now employed by many enterprise customers.

Managed Tape Back Up Solution   The Company provides the hardware, media, software, and ongoing management of the backup process for data residing on Customer servers located within a company’s Data Center.  The Company also provides the tape rotation and logging to facilitate tape storage offsite at a secure, remote, and climate-controlled facility.

Tape Rotation Service           With the Tape Rotation Service, the Customer provides the hardware, media, software, and ongoing management of the backup process located within a Company Data Center.  The Company provides the tape rotation and logging, managed to an operational checklist created by the Customer.  The tapes are then stored offsite at a secure, remote, and climate-controlled facility.

Internet Access

The Company manages a fiber-based, N+1, multi-homed, regionally diverse network to provide internet bandwidth to its clients both off premise and hosted at the Company Data Centers.  The Company purchases multiple gigabits of capacity from six different carriers and is one of the largest purchasers of bandwidth in the region.  

The Company’s Internet services are geared to providing burst capacity high bandwidth internet access to local entity businesses.  The service is provided via redundant carrier access (five local fiber providers with diverse entrances), six redundant Internet Service providers all managed by Route Science Path Control, and redundant carrier class Cisco core routing and switching network infrastructure. All the Company’s critical infrastructure components are monitored using SNMP management tools (Open View, NetCool, and Custom developed solutions).  Today these services are used by major clients in several key markets including transportation, medical, energy, financial and information services, education and government.

Work Group Recovery Facilities

CoSentry’s advanced work group recovery solutions have become the acknowledged industry leader in this business resiliency space. Work Group Recovery is simply defined as the recovery of the employee side of a company’s organization.  As information hits the desktop, companies have realized that it is no longer sufficient to simply back up equipment and data - the real business is being conducted by their personnel. They answer the phones, speak to the customer, take orders, disseminate information and are responsible for the maintenance of the cash flow. Information is useless unless personnel are at their desks, doing their jobs.

Over the last several years, organizations have begun placing added focus on work group recovery solutions for their business, driven by both operational necessity and regulatory compliance. Solutions such as those offered by the Company have changed the way organizations can fulfill their business continuity needs after the occurrence of an unforeseen business interruption, small or large.

The Company is a leading provider of Work Group Recovery solutions.  The Company’s Work Group Recovery Facilities allows its clients who have been negatively impacted by a fire, tornado, anthrax packet, or loss of power, for example,  to resume business operations in a matter of minutes, not days, based on the recovery time objectives (RTO) of the customer.  e for end user functions. 

The Company offers an array of “Hot”, “Warm”, and “Cold” shared Work Group Recovery options to meet the needs of the marketplace.  For hot recovery, customers can choose the oversubscription rate that best meets their risk vs. cost profile.  The Warm option allows a customer to supplement their hot recovery needs at a lower cost.

Print Recovery Services

Similar in nature to the Company’s Work Group Recovery offering, Print Recovery is a relatively new business resiliency offering.  While resiliency plans are often in place for data and data infrastructure, there are often no plans to replace or recover a companies mailing and printing operations.  The Company’s Print Recovery offering is targeted to the many organizations that rely on their mailing and printing operations as a source of significant revenue.  These businesses realize that the business impact of interrupted printing, mailing, and distribution would have a crippling effect on their operation.  This is especially true if an effective recovery plan is not in place.  Whether it is invoicing, checks, statements, EOB’s, or other vital documents, CoSentry provides a wide range of print and mail operations to keep a business operational.   Features of the offer include:

• Fully Secure Print / Insertion Facility
• Cut sheet Printing
• Folding / Inserting / Mail
• Mail Presort Services

In addition to providing print recovery, the Company’s unique facility can also be utilized as an overflow outsourcing facility for subscribing clients.

Other Business Resiliency Services

• Managed Firewall Services (Level 1 and Level 2)
• VPN Client to LAN
• VPN LAN to LAN
• Point to Point Carrier Services
• Managed Intrusion Detection Service solution through reseller arrangement with Solutionary
• Load Balancing

Related Consulting Services

In addition to its suite of recurring revenue product offerings, the Company also offers a full suite of Business Continuity and Managed Service consulting services including:

• Risk Assessment
• Business Impact Analysis
• Recoverability Assessment
• Business Resiliency Planning
• Certification, Exercise, and Testing
• Data Center Assessments
• Data Center Migration Services

CoSentry Historical View

2001
The Company, in partnership with Norm Waitt (co-founder of Gateway Computers), begins operations with the opening of a Secure Data Center and Network Operating Center and begins hosting several corporate clients while introducing an array of managed services.

2002
As part of the managed services offering and to support several Fortune 100 companies, SolutionsDesk ^TM is introduced to facilitate the monitoring and management of client networks 7x24.

2003
The Company enters the business continuity environment with the opening of a 400 seat work group recovery facility.   The WGR offering is the direct result of client requests for a local, high availability, hot site for work group recovery.   In addition, the Company enhances its bandwidth offering with the addition of the area’s most aggressive BGP routing capability adding multiple carriers complementing its investment in N+1 redundancy. 

2004

The Company establishes the region’s only Print and Mail Recovery service.  In conjunction with the build out of the Print and Mail facility, the Omaha Data Center is expanded, more than doubling the Company’s raised floor offering.  The Company also becomes the areas largest provider of high availability internet bandwidth. 

The Company is listed as one of the fastest growing companies in Omaha by the Omaha Chamber of Commerce.

2005

The Company’s continued growth in business continuity and managed services drives a new branding of the Company’s offerings.  The CoSentry brand is introduced providing one source for Work Group, Print and Mail Recovery along with Data Center Hosting and associated managed technical services.   Continued strong client demand drives the expansion of the Omaha Work Group Recovery capability from 400 seats to 650 seats.  Additionally, CoSentry also establishes a 500 seat Work Group Recovery and Data Center facility in Kansas City, Missouri and a 250 seat Work Group Recovery and Data Center facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. CoSentry’s proprietary Solutions Desk ™ tool goes international in order to support, monitor, maintain and provide service dispatch for customers’ world wide.  Finally, CoSentry signs a partnering agreement with SunGard, IBM and Hewlett Packard to leverage the Company’s services on a global basis.  

CoSentry is recognized for its progress and is named Technology Company of the Year by the AIM Institute.

2006

The Company partners with DataVault to provide disk based storage backup services for small and mid size businesses regionally.   CoSentry also adds high end storage devices to manage data storage requirements for clients requiring terabytes of storage.   In addition, the Company partners with Continuum Worldwide to provide the regions only full service main frame and mid range recovery service.   The Company makes significant hardware investments in its server provisioning offering and enhances its server management tool sets.   The Company introduces significant enhancements to SolutionsDesk ^TM and to CoSentry’s technical call center infrastructure and experiences significant growth in its Level 1, 2 & 3 technical support capabilities.

2007

The Company completes an additional raised floor suite in Omaha and Kansas City. By year end the Company will have over 17,500 sq. ft. of raised floor space in addition to 1,600 Work Group Recovery Seats and the regions largest Print Recovery capability.   CoSentry’s SolutionsDesk ^TM application is monitoring and managing over 250,000 devices world wide.   CoSentry’s facilities encompass over 100,000 sq. ft. of infrastructure dedicated to Business Availability Services making CoSentry the largest network of business resiliency solutions in the region.   CoSentry’s success over the past seven years has its roots in our commitment to our clients, the ability to listen to their recommendations and to develop solutions that meet their requirements.  

In recognition of its commitment to client communication and solutions development, CoSentry was awarded the 2007 excellence in business award from the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce. 

2008

Due to increased market demand, the Company launches additional raised floor expansion efforts in both the Omaha and Kansas City market.  In 2008, the Company will add over 7,200 sq. ft. of raised floor space, bringing total raised floor space under management to approximately 25,000 sq. ft.  The Company also announces that the McCarthy Group, an Omaha based private equity firm with approximately $1 billion under management, has partnered with the Company to provide additional capital and strategic resources.

CoSentry… your trusted source for the high availability infrastructure and collaborative technical services essential for a resilient, always on, business environment.

CoSentry Management and Employees

The Company has assembled an experienced and entrepreneurial-minded management team with experience in senior management, sales, marketing, operations, finance, and technology with a variety of companies, including several start-up ventures.  The management team is comprised of the following individuals:

Michael Steffan         President & CEO

Mike has over 20 years experience in the technology sector. He was a founding partner of InaCom Corporation, providing executive leadership in corporate development, sales, IT, manufacturing and distribution. Prior to joining CoSentry, Mike was the vice president and general manager of Hewlett Packard/Compaq Direct where he was responsible for developing and growing Hewlett Packard direct manufacturing, distribution, call center and order book management capabilities supporting hardware and support services to Hewlett Packard’s customers and channel partners in North America.   Mr. Steffan has a BS degree from Creighton University.

Joe Urzendowski       Vice President and COO

Joe is a 1985 graduate of the University of Nebraska at Omaha with a BS in Professional Accounting. Prior to joining CoSentry in 2004, Joe was a Senior Tax and Business Consultant with Deloitte & Touche from 1986–1989 and a member of the Finance team at Peter Kiewit & Sons’ from 1989-1992, where he was primarily focused on merger and acquisition activity.  In 1992, Joe joined Data Transmission Network, a subscription based information service’s company, where he held various management and executive positions, most recently as Sr. Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.  Joe has extensive expertise in finance, technical and administrative operations, as well as leading new growth initiatives. 

Kevin Dohrmann      Vice President and CTO

Kevin has 24 years of experience in the technology industry, including technical support and international call center operations management, Internet telephony, and the World Wide Web. He co-founded an Internet telephony company that provided Web-based telephone services to large U.S. and European carriers. He has been involved in various aspects of Internet and Web development since 1992. Dohrmann has published many articles on technology networking topics and is a frequent speaker on technology trends and the impact technology has on business. Dohrmann was granted a patent (6,192,123) used in telephony and database technology in 1998.

           
Manny Quevedo        Vice President – Sales and Marketing

Manny has been in the network industry since 1983. His focus has been in data networking and transport services with international providers including MCI, Nextel and InaCom. As a top executive, he had the opportunity to design and implement multi-national networks for some of the world's leading companies. He was also instrumental in building the nation’s first all digital wireless network in southern California. Prior to joining IP Revolution, Quevedo was Vice President of Sales, Services and Marketing for InaCom Corporation.  

Doug West     Vice President & General Manager – South Region

Doug has been in the communications and networking industry since 1975. He spent his early years with Codex Corporation and Motorola, where he held various management and director level positions in both engineering and sales. Mr. West also managed direct and indirect sales to RBOC's (Regional Bell Operating Companies) for Teleglobe and Memotec. Prior to joining IP Revolution, West built the firm’s networking practice and was a Vice President of an Omaha-based Systems Integration firm.

Cris Freiwald             Vice President & General Manager – North Region

Cris has been active in the computer industry since 1980 with experience in programming, sales, project management, new business development and general management. During a 20 year career at InaCom Corporation his executive responsibilities included VP of Corporate Development and President of the International Division. Cris was Managing Director for an international consortium of system integrators in 56 countries that implemented large scale technology roll outs for global 200 companies. Cris graduated from Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD, with BA degrees in economics and German.

Dan Cullen     Vice President & General Manager -  Print Division

Dan has over 20 years of experience in the technology and service industry with several companies.  He has spent the bulk of his career at Lanier Worldwide Inc. where he held various positions in Service Management, Sales Engineering, and Project Management.  Progressive promotions within Lanier led him to positions in Illinois, Ohio, Colorado and California.  Immediately prior to joining CoSentry, Cullen worked for a Midwest Xerox Independent Service Organization.  In addition to his responsibilities with the Print division, Dan also directs the Company’s engineering activities.

Lonnie Graver           Corporate Controller  
Lonnie brings extensive experience in helping companies grow at a rapid pace. He has over 13 years experience in accounting, with 10 years focused specifically in the IT sector. Prior to CoSentry, Graver was with a local Systems Integrator for 5 years. Graver has an undergraduate degree in Business Administration with a focus on accounting and an MBA with a concentration in finance.